Abstract Consumer beliefs play an important role in explaining consumer behavior. This exploratory study aims at building an inventory of consumer beliefs about organic food. To reach this objective, we conducted a content analysis of online comments about organic food posted on news websites and forums in German-speaking countries (n = 1094) and the United States (n = 1069). Such user-generated content has emerged as an abundant source of insight for consumer research, although very little has been exploited in organic food consumption research. The main result of this study is a comprehensive category system of 65 organic food beliefs and their relative frequencies. The category system reflects the large variety of beliefs and their differing salience within and across the two regions studied. We discuss the relevance of our category system for future survey, experimental, and textual research, as well as for marketing practitioners and policy-makers.

中文翻译：

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使用在线评论探索德语国家和美国消费者对有机食品的看法

摘要 消费者信念在解释消费者行为方面起着重要作用。这项探索性研究旨在建立消费者对有机食品的信念清单。为了实现这一目标，我们对德语国家（n = 1094）和美国（n = 1069）的新闻网站和论坛上发布的有关有机食品的在线评论进行了内容分析。这种用户生成的内容已成为消费者研究的丰富见解来源，尽管在有机食品消费研究中很少被利用。本研究的主要结果是 65 种有机食品信念及其相对频率的综合分类系统。类别系统反映了所研究的两个区域内和跨区域的大量信仰及其不同的显着性。